


Many, Many Reasons Why The Endar Spire Is A Terrible Place To Work

by LightsaberWeildingDalek



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Am I tagging right?, Attempt at Humor, F_ing with people’s minds, Gen, Unreliable Narrator, then again that’s normally taken as red with a Kotor fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-11-14 00:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11197041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightsaberWeildingDalek/pseuds/LightsaberWeildingDalek
Summary: Lisa is not having a good day, and it's only going to get worse from here. She just hopes there's decent Caf somewhere on this exploding rollercoaster her life has become.





	1. In which Our Hero fantasises about violence

Lisa knew she was not going to have a good day from the moment she woke up. 

Lisa mentally added this to the large pile of bad days, weeks and months, that had followed her "recruitment" into the trundling, bloated machine that was the Republic war effort. In fact , Lisa could probably pull those bad days all the way back to her disagreeing with Squinty Alec, who (when he caught her, of course), blew up Lisa's ship, drugged her up to her eyeballs, and dumped her into the recruitment centre. Yes, Lisa liked that, as it meant that she could blame everything that had happened since, including the fall off her bunk that she just had to endure, solely on the unfairly muscled shoulders of that huttsucking nerfherder.

There was a hand on Lisa’s shoulder. She ignored it in favour of fantasising about the many, many ways she could systematically dismantle Alec’s ship, sanity, and bank account. The hand started shaking her insistently, while Lisa mapped out a complex bank heist through the unbeaten vaults of the Banking Clan, complete with co-conspirators, likely patrol patterns, and how many rubber ducks she’d need. 

Lisa eventually deigned to open her eyes when the voice attached to the arm started to yell at her. The man attached to said arm and voice was yelling something about an attack. That made Lisa sit up. She blearily asked the orange smudge what the hell was going on (though not in as polite words) as she wiped the spittle from her face, grimacing at the overly enthusiastic ramblings about a Sith attack, Bastila the Jedi general, that he was her bunkmate, Bastila the amazing Jedi, and did he mention beautiful Bastila the amazing Jedi. 

As the ship shuddered, Lisa squinted at the man, who had proclaimed his name to be “Trask Ulgo, you know, of House Ulgo on Alderan? don’t worry, I’m a very minor member…” . The now named Trask babbled on as Lisa tried to work out if he was concussed, or just high. There was a possibility that he was permanently brain damaged, but she couldn’t see any obvious damage to his head, and she didn’t think the Republic hired brain damaged men as officers. Lisa kind of hoped he was high rather than injured, as druggies had experience in carrying on with their jobs and hoping their superiors didn’t smell spice in the air, while concussed people didn’t know how to use their condition in a fight. 

Lisa made pointed looks at Trask until he stepped outside the door, still muttering about security codes. Then, she got dressed and armed, wishing that the trainee commander hadn’t confiscated her beautiful vibroblade for threatening to cut the lekku off of Izir from analytics, the stuck-up, sexist, idiot. The only reason he had his nice, cushy, desk job was because of his family. He didn’t even have to go through training, and as soon as he got a supervisor who was’t afraid of his surname, Izir would be kicked back to Ryloth with his tail tucked behind his legs. Of course at this point, said supervisor would then be attacked with the full force of the Secura family, but a lot of Lisa’s fantasies had to be cut short like that. Either way, Lisa’s customised vibroblade was in the armoury now, and she couldn’t get it back now.

Now with at least the pretence of being ready to fight, Lisa opened the door and shoved a blaster into Ulgo’s shaking hands, as she marched down the corridor of the Endar Spire quarters, wishing for caf, a better sword, or at the very least, a muzzle so she wouldn’t have to keep hearing the instructions on how doors work.


	2. In which Our Hero goes through another man's pockets

2  
Lisa’s hopes of a dramatic and implacable march through the ship was immediately stymied when the door to the main corridor was locked. Of course she only found that out when she stalked straight into the durasteel doors. Her mind went into overdrive as Lisa tried to find a way round. Was there another way out of this module? No, so that paranoid old soldiers could sleep at night without having to coat every entrance in explosives. Could she fit through the air ducts, like in that holovid she was obsessed with when she was five? No, though she could just about fit her gun in if she needed to shoot someone else who thought the could. Could she hack the lock? No, computers hated Lisa with a hatred born of a very embarrassing incident involving a jedi cosplayer event and an amorous Rodian bartender. 

However she maybe able to jam her sword in-between the doors and wedge it open. As long as the blade didn’t break. These swords were supposed to be able to stand up against lightsabers, and a lightsaber could probably do this, so Lisa probably wouldn’t destroy her only weapon. Probably. 

Praying to every deity that she did and didn’t believe in, Lisa stepped forward with the shoddy sword held up, and Trask Ulgo keyed in the door codes, loudly announcing his skill at slicing, with his “Republic Communications Officer” badge held high like it would shield his from the blaster fire streaking past the now open door. 

Lisa took a good few seconds to goggle at the smiling idiot that had probably saved her life by warning her about the attack. She still was undecided on the concussion/high issue, but if he was high, Lisa really wanted the name of his supplier. She could make a fortune with that quality of happy-time drugs. 

In the time it took for Lisa’s face to warp from anger to a smirk, Ulgo had already ran forward into melee range of the sith troopers ranging the corridor, before trying to shoot them point blank. Amazingly, every single one of these shots missed.

Looking back on that rush of combat, Lisa thinks it was the shock of that insane luck that gave her the opportunity to kill the trooper right in front of Ulgo before a rifle of shots were sent straight into his unarmored belly. At the same time Ulgo aimed at the next closest being- from the slight curves in the armour, they may have been a woman, Lisa wasn’t sure- and, as if the universe wanted to make up for that embarrassment earlier, hit her at the gap between her ill-fitting helmet, and the bodysuit underneath.

There was only one man left, and, to Lisa’s highly tuned sense of smell, he’d just lost control of his bowels. She paused, planning to calm him down, smile, and ease into telling her what the nine Corellian hells was going on. She wouldn’t be surprised if this was his first taste of combat, and the whirlwind of Trask had just killed his commanding officers. Lisa was lowering her sword, with a gentle smile and disarming quip on her lips, when a wild spray of blaster fire coursed its way towards her. She ducked, spitting Huttese curses, and Ulgo made himself useful, hitting the boys rifle with a well aimed blast. 

What Lisa didn’t know, and wouldn’t for sometime, is that the Sith Army had outsourced their basic rifle manufacture to Czerka Corp. Czerka Corp, or the other hand, had took advantage of the planet-fuls of new slaves, and built factories on the planet of Ryloth. The mostly Twi’leki resistance on that planet had infiltrated one of the factories where these rifles were made, in fact the very one in which the rifle Track Ulgo had just shot were made, and tampered with the energy containment systems in the blaster fuel containment. The end result was, that the blaster now on the Endar Spire, in the hands of a young boy named Propus Granfm, a farm boy who joined up to pay for his paraplegic sister’s new legs, exploded in his face and killed him. It should be known that his back pay was enough to pay for young Mis Granfm’s legs, and she lived a long, happy, and prosperous life on a kelp farm for the rest of her days.

Back on the Endar Spire, Lisa’s jaw dropped just a fraction, before she gave Trask a withering glare and started rummaging through the intact corpses pockets. She didn’t have time to do a proper search for hidden pockets and keepsakes, but she got her hands on a handful of credits, some dubious looking stims that she didn’t let Trask see in case he decided he needed another fix, and the jewel of her haul, a very grimy frag grenade. She pocketed for a last resort, and hoped the rest of the route to her emergency station wouldn’t be as eventful. 

Lisa was wrong about that, and in fact she would never reach her emergency station at all, not that the cadet commander ever had a chance to yell at her about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first combat scene I've ever written. I hope it sounds ok.


	3. In which Our Hero changes her jacket

Lisa was cleaning the blood and shredded muscle off her face with a rag she’d filched out a dead mans pocket- she had written off the jacket as a lost cause, and frankly she was glad to be rid of it. It was a very nice jacket, that suited her colouring, had lots of small hidden pockets, and even an inbuilt blaster holster. However it was a gift from Squinty Alec from the fourth time he tried to woo her, so Lisa wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of tracker woven into the hem. She had scanned it when she got it but Alec’s connections were vast and his favourite minion was very tricksy. What was that mans name again? Karas? Paul? No, Lisa couldn’t remember. What did it matter anyway. He was a forgettable looking man who couldn’t even lead a pirate ship without Squinty Alec holding his hand. 

Looking at Ulgo, who was still in the exact position as five minutes ago, when the kid exploded over the two of them and a large portion of the wall, Lisa sighed and started wiping the gore off his blank face. She had no idea why she was feeling so maternal towards Trask. She’d figure it out later, though the cynical part of Lisa’s brain jumped in with the thought that as soon as Trask snapped out of the state he was in, no matter the cause, she would end up regretting ever meeting him.

Right now though, the man couldn’t even wipe the gore off his face, let alone put on airs about social circumstances, so Lisa gently pulled Trask away from the corpses, muttering comforting nonsense as she sat him down on a bulkhead and tried to get some of the muck off his vacant face. Throughout the entire thing, Trask stayed blank, even when Lisa went through his pockets for another rag. 

Forcing herself to think objectively, Lisa knew that Trask’s condition has worsened drastically during the fight. She knew now that it was likely some mix of mental trauma and a severe head injury. Tilting his head forward, Lisa could see dried blood blending in with the unbleached roots of Trask’s hair. Rather than being the ally Lisa had assumed he would be at the start of this mess, she would have to shepherd Trask to the medbay. She sort of felt bad about all the drug jokes now, as with that sort of head wound, Lisa was surprised he was still conscious, let alone managing to warn her. 

Just as Lisa was looking up the path to the closest medbay on her com, a voice came over the announcement system. Lisa’s head snapped to the speaker in the corner of the room, her hand on the butt of the blaster. Trask’s head faltered behind hers, as his mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.  
A male voice boomed out, “This is Carth Onasi - the Sith are threatening to overrun our position! We can’t hold out long against their firepower! All hands to the bridge!”.  
The man was obviously trying to sound strong and authoritative, but Lisa could hear the undertone of panic in his voice, and blaster fire in the background. Obviously the situation was much worse than she’d thought, if the bridge was under siege. 

Lisa had a conundrum on her hand. She had been ordered to reinforce the bridge, and it was the logical thing to do. On the other hand, she had a responsibility to look after Trask, and anyway, she owed him.  
Just as Lisa was beginning to ponder the situation in ernest, movement in the corner of her eye. Trask was stumbling along the corridor, his mouth shaping unheard words. Lisa caught his arm and tried to calm Trask down again, but he seemed to have regained a good part of his enthusiasm and pulled away, babbling. Lisa listened this time as she chased after him. Apparently, Carth Onasi was a highly decorated soldier, and they had to rescue him, and so Trask was going to play the hero, and Bastila would be there, and she’d be so impressed with him that he’d get a special jedi kiss…  
Lisa didn’t feel like mentioning the jedi were celibate to him, but at least Trask was semi-coherent again. It also looked like he’d solved her conundrum for her. Hopefully there would be some medics at the bridge who could treat Trask for her, and get him to safety. 

Of course first they would have to get through however many Sith were between them and the bridge.

Lisa was just catching up to Trask- he was surprisingly speedy for an information analyst- as he charged into an open door like an skinny but broad shouldered bull. Yelps of surprise filtered by Sith helmets filled the air, and were echoed by the sound of blaster fire hitting the steel walls. Lisa pushed herself just a little bit further and leapt through the door with her sword outstretched, impaling a surprised seeming Sith before they could shoot Trask from behind. The aforementioned man had engaged in a sword fight with the other Trooper. He was holding his own, but the enemy clearly had had much more training, while Lisa wouldn’t be surprised is Trask had learnt to sword fight as a schoolboy sport. She watched and waited, looking for an opening, and when the Sith overreached, taking advantage of Trask’s missteps, Lisa lunged in and took his head off. 

The sudden surge of energy that had entered Trask seemed to have calmed down at bit now, and he seemed content to wait while Lisa rummaged through the dead men’s pockets. This time she only got a few credits. The room they had stopped in however, made up for that shortfall. According to Lisa’s map., it was labelled as resupply room. In practical terms, there were weapons, armour and even grenades in various locked chests. Unfortunately only two were within Trask’s ability to open. 

One chest held a variety of swords, and Lisa happily replaced her rusty, battered training sword with a used, but still rather sharp blade. She suspected it was kept in this rather out of the way station due to the bloodstains somehow seared into the metal of the blade. For that to happen the sword must have been subject to some pretty extreme heat, and Lisa had a sneaking suspicion that she knew how the previous owner had died. A lightsaber would also neatly explain the distortions on the grip of the hilt.  
However, beggars weren’t choosers, and this was the best sword in the tub. She glanced an evaluating eye over Trask’s sword, but it was pretty high quality, if a bit too ornate for her tastes, and these were mass produced swords one step away from being thrown out an airlock. 

The other box looked like it had been converted into a locker by some enterprising guard, and held a pouch full of grenades, and an armoured combat jacket. Lisa was grateful for this, as her undershirt was very thin and wispy. Even though Trask was in no state look at her in that way, she could swear she could feel the last Trooper’s leering eyes tracing their way down her body. Glancing to make sure Trask was looking the other way, fiddling with the locked door out, Lisa pulled the jacket over her head, then adjusted the straps till everything was comfortable. Thank the Force for one-size-fits-all.

As Trask exclaimed in pride as the door lock disengaged, Lisa grabbed at his hand before he could open the door. She gestured for Trask to stay quiet and pressed her ear to the crack between the doors.  
There was a firefight going on on the other side, and she didn’t know if they would be able to survive another fight, especially with people who were ready for them. She didn’t know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't put this at the end of the fic at first because it felt really demanding, but I would really like some feedback on how good this is. Or bad, tell me I'm a terrible writer and should give up immediately if you want, I'd like to know why you think that, and that you think that at all. Or fix my spelling and grammar and question my IQ.  
> Just if I've done something you don't like, tell me. If I've done something you do like, tell me. I'd just like to know I'm not yelling out into empty space.


	4. In which Our Hero doesn't actually do anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relatively short update, but I just wanted it up so I could start afresh on a new part and not be as stuck.

To hide her growing panic, Lisa focused on what she could hear on the other side of the door. Blasterfire, obviously, at least 6 different guns going. There was a slightly different pitch to the sound of the bolt being fired from different makes of guns, and Lisa could hear about equal numbers of basic Sith rifles, and the make that the republic handed out to their grunts. There was also the sounds of swords clashing, but luckily, there was no distinctive hum of a lightsaber. Given the republic protocol for a Lightsaber- wielder was “run and let the Jedi handle it”, Lisa didn’t fancy her chances, no matter what the adrenaline-fueled panic part of her brain said.  
The yelling was all male, some open to the air and others filtered through Sith helmets. The constant rumbling of The Endar Spire’s engines obscured some of the details, as did the deep thuds of turbo-lasers hitting the unshielded hull. There was a gurgling cry as someone (Republic, by the lack of filtering on the voice) took a hit in the lung- a fairly quick death at least- followed by a similar yell from a Sith.  
Hopefully sides would wipe each other out and Lisa could get Trask through without exposing him to another fight. She would hope for the Republic soldiers to win, but Lisa had a horrible feeling that she would be accused of desertion if they found her wandering the halls alone with a brain-damaged information analyst.  
Speaking of Trask, Lisa turned her head to find him centimetres away from her face, staring with rapt contemplation at the crack between the double doors. At least he was calm, Lisa didn’t think she could cope with another berserker rampage through the ship corridors. She coaxed him gently away from the door and sat him down on a locker. If Lisa got into a fight, she didn’t want him stumbling into the path of a blade or rifle.  
Lisa pressed her ear back to crack of the door just in time to hear the deep thu-umb of a grenade going off. The sound of blaster fine petered off, and the clanking of boots on the corridor grew louder as the owners of the boots grew closer. A hissing, tinny voice came from the helmet of the man Lisa had beheaded, asking why there hadn’t been any reinforcements. Lisa considered putting the helmet on and attempting to bluff her way into being left alone, but the man the helmet-and head- had belonged to was broad shouldered and tall. There was no way she could pitch her voice that low.  
Instead Lisa prepared for a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you think. I am desperate to know if it is ok or not.


	5. In which Yan the medic has a very bad day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the point of view of Yan, a Sith Medic, assigned to a squad of badass commandos for experience

5  
Commander Narkani stormed past Yan as he fumbled with his rifle.Yan stumbled to the back of formation, shifting his ill-fitting helmet so he could see out of at least part of the eyeshield. When he voiced a complaint, the commander whipped round, livid glare evident even through the darkened visor. Yan cringed as his com was filled with angry shouting about his parentage, sexuality, and mental capabilities. The other soldiers, used to Narkani’s outbursts, dutifully moved into position, flanking the door to the silent room. Yan was short compared to them, thanks to his heavy-world ancestry, so he had to peer round his coworkers to see the Commander slice her way through the portal. As the doors swooshed open, expletives and gasps echoed though Yan’s comm. The formation inched forward , allowing Yan to see the blood seeping into the gaps between the plating on the floor. The unmistakeable stench filled Yan’s nostrils, even filtered through the helmet, and he clutched his medical supplies, hoping that there was someone still alive for him to treat, yet dreading that he would have to play the coroner again.  
As the patrol fanned out across the cramped room, Yan spotted two dead men. The cause of death was obvious. One had no head, and the other had been impaled on a sword left at his feet. Tan looked for the missing head so he could send the whole body back to family (after a bit of discreet stitching) to be buried. The head had rolled under the central table, so Yan put down his gun to fish it out. As he scrabbled to to pick up the body part in a non-insulting manner, the helmet slipped off of the head. Pulling it out at last, Yan let out an involuntary gasp, and was aggressively shushed over the comms.

Yan knew this man. They weren't best friends, but he knew this man. His name was El'kar, though his paperwork said Elvan, and he was one of Yan's regular patients. Yan was the only person El'kar trusted enough to do his check-ups. This may have been due the fact that he was hiding that his father was Echani. El'kar had told Yan one night when he had noticed some abnormalities in "Elvan's" results. His father was a wandering mercenary (an almost stereotypical Echani career), and his mother an impressionable young waitress at a cantina. Everyone knew the story from that point, El'kar was born to two loving parents, but then his father was killed on a job. His parents had never officially been married , and when El’kar signed up, he hid his ancestry to hide from persecution. Yan could sympathise, as he had some not-so-distant Mirialan relatives he had very careful to not put on his paperwork. El’kar had shaved his head to hide the distinctive silver hair, and had luckily inherited his mother’s eyes rather having to wear smuggled contacts.  
And now Yan was going to have to falsify the DNA test result in the autopsy, and various other scans, so that El’kar could be sent home to his mother and cousins to be buried the way his people wanted to be.

Yan tried to be respectful as he could placing a mans decapitated head on a desk, but El’kar still made an unpleasant squelching sound as he blindly stared right at Yan, as if to say, “Where Were You 10 Minutes Ago”.Yan shivered and placed El’kar’s helmet back on, nominally to hide the silver fuzz on his bald head, but actually to stop those eyes boring straight into his soul. 

There was an alarmed shout from the other squad members. Yan scrabbled for his blaster on the table, accidentally knocking El’kar over and throwing his helmet to the ground. Yan threw a guilty glance over his shoulder as he threw himself around the corner to find…. his cohorts pointing their blasters at a sitting man, with a bloody sword laid on his lap. Commander Narkani was yelling at Yan, calling for this man to be checked over by a medic.  
Yan squeezed past the wall of men (alright, it was three, but they were tall and broad, ok) armour clanking against the wall, to crouch next to the Commander. The prisoner hadn't moved at all, even when Yan tried to draw his attention with a waved hand. Yan unhooked his first response kit from the small of his back, and lifted up the mans head to check his pupils. The dilatation was minimal, and Yan told his boss that the man wasn't responding . He got another withering look from Narkani, and was told to sedate the man before bagging up the bodies for transport. Apparently the Commander was going to get a "decent medic" to look at the prisoner before they interrogated him.

Yan was just about to protest when a figure dropped from the ceiling, driving a sword deep into the Commander's sternum and shooting at Yan with a blaster. He was knocked back into the wall, golden armour blackened and hissing, and watched the attack whip round into his cohorts, ripping the blaster from one to shoot another, before breaking it over the original owners skull. Yan tried to work out how this person was beating well trained commandos like it was nothing. Now that there were no longer blaster shots obscuring his vision, Yan could see that the figure was in fact a woman, slender, with intricately woven hair, and wearing an ill-fitting waistcoat instead of a shirt. Yan silently berated his brain for paying attention to the details, and strained for his blaster, which had fallen just out of reach, and tried not to aggravate the burns on his torso and legs.  
The woman, locked in combat with the close-quarters specialist of the team as the other aimed careful blasterfire at her head, raised hand with the almost forgotten holdout in her hand, and jammed it under the closest mans chin. There was no way she could miss.  
The shooter yelled in anger- Yan thinks they were brothers from their appearance and closeness at the barracks, at least close cousins- and the woman dived towards Yan again, making him flinch and drop the butt of his rifle against the floor. Her head snapped towards him , with a predatory glint in her eye, that would have made Yan loose control of his bowels if he hadn't already done so a few seconds ago. A single shot hit her in the shoulder, and the murder-thing in the body of a human woman staggered slightly. At this Yan's heart slightly, hoping, just for a moment, that they could kill her and call for evac. This spark was extinguished when the woman grasped at the blade still embedded in the remains of the Commander, and swung it up with a horrible ripping noise, cleaving the last soldier standing in two.  
At this point Yan's hands were shaking so much, he couldn't even grasp his rifle properly. The clanking of his armour plating shivering against one another echoed through the room as the woman pushed herself up off the floor, not even bothering to try and dodge Yan's wild , terrified shooting. In a desperate attempt to save his skin, Yan pointed his gun at the man still sitting on the locker next to where he landed.  
If Yan had thought the woman's eyes were bad before, now it was like gazing into the heart of a world, full of fury and restrained power. The woman lifted her sword-arm slightly and in response Yan tried to focus on his new hostage, turning to look at him. This was Yan's last mistake. As the killer left his restricted view there was whirling noise and a foot of corrosis steel sprouted from his torso. Yan stared in shock, red blood swelling up from the centre of his chest.  
The last thing he saw was a hand plucking the rifle from his burnt hands, while the other was caressing the head of the ex-hostage in a motherly fashion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stayed up far to late to finish this, so please tell me if I missed something


	6. In which Our Hero has a Panic Attack

Lisa knelt in the cooling blood, caressing Trasks' head, struggling to hold herself together. She should not have been able to do that. It was as if there was something else in her head, coldly calculating angles and motions. Trembling, Lisa wasted herself to sit next to Trask. The impromptu bench creaked under their combined weight. Trask turned to her, glassy-eyed, and snuggled into her blood-soaked side. Lisa mechanically stroked her arm as the she tried to make sense of what had just happened. 

Fact: She could not (normally) fight very well.   
Fact: Lisa just took down an entire squad of Sith commandos.   
Fact: She was not in full control of her body (or thoughts) during said fight.  
Conclusion: There was something else in her head doing the fighting for her, and who knows what else.

Lisa frantically looked over her recent memory, searching for an unexplained gap. Her trembling hand lifted to her scalp, feeling for scars. Normally she would hesitate due to not wanting to get flakes of drying blood tangles in her plait, but this was in no way a normal situation, and Lisa was pretty sure there was brain matter (there was something squelching under her fingers) there already. Anything that could could control her and cause Lisa to do things she never learnt would have to be hooked directly into her brain. The implantation had to have been after her last serious injury, because the underground doctor she had gone to was The Best in the business. Dr Kyanto was very expensive, but he was worth every credit.   
It had been during her run from Squinty Alec’s amorous kidnap attempts. One of his henchmen, disguised as a Sith soldier doing a random check, had injected her with some sort of bioengineered virus (not that she knew that at the time). If Squinty Alec wasn’t so much of a sadistic creep, Lisa would almost be impressed by how much effort and resources he had spent to find her. Either way, everyone walking past had just seen Lisa kick a Sith trooper in the nuts and steal his bike, so she had had to get off-planet. The infection had started kicking in about three-quarters of the way to the docks, when she started seeing fluffy Selkath swimming along side her, as the whir of her stolen bike turned into a Wookie’s indignant wail.  
Luckily, the chemicals produced had not yet affected Lisa’s rationale, and she managed to get to her ship, abet with a few random swerves during the drive to avoid an imaginary tap-dancing zabrak. At which point she had just enough time to instruct her latest astromech to take them to Dr Kyanto before she collapsed. The next time she woke up, it was to Kyanto’s scarred face, and a gruff explanation of what she had been given. Squinty Alec had got his hands on an illegal experimental slaving bioweapon. One of Kyanto’s old buddies had made it for a Hutt warlord, with the intent to have a gas that could be spread through an atmosphere and rewire the entire populations brains till even the thought of disobeying the warlord would cause extreme pain. The scientist could never get the weapon to travel in a gas format and was killed for the Hutt’s impatience. After that the Jedi had come down hard on that particular cartel and all samples of that virus were reportedly destroyed.   
Obviously someone had smuggled some of it out to Squinty Alec, and it took all of Dr Kyanto’s skill and illegally gained expertise to excise the virus from Lisa’s skull. He even waived a good part of the fee because Lisa had a) given him an exciting challenge, b) got him a sample of his late friend’s Magnus Opus, and c) told him where to find the people he needed to kill for using the thing that should have been destroyed years ago. So Lisa set Dr Kyanto on Squinty Alec’s operation and ran like hell in the other direction.  
Unfortunately someone must have predicted where Lisa would go after being injected with something unknown, and started shooting at her (though Lisa suspected that they were a faction within Squinty Alec’s group, given that they didn’t bring her back for creepy innuendo overlaid with threats) leading to the events that left Lisa sitting on a locker, in the middle of a battle, surrounded by corpses, while a crazy technician clinged to her.

There was a groove in Lisa’s skull, curving from the nape of her neck to just above her left ear. The skin had healed without a scar, explaining why she hadn’t noticed before, but the bone itself healed slower. She figured it must have been the Republic who put a combat implant in her brain, but Lisa still didn’t know why. Perhaps her training group had been test subjects, or maybe it was just her who had been given implants unconsciously. Lisa was hoping it was only intense battles the implant was programmed to activate in. She didn’t want to cave someones head in during a drunken arm wrestle. There was nothing else she could do. There was no way she could find a surgeon in the middle of a boarding, let alone somewhere safe enough for her to have her scalp peeled open. 

Lisa took deep breaths, trying to ride the end of her panic attack smoothly back to what passed for normal. One she thought she could walk, Lisa untangled Trasks limbs from her waist, and got up. It looked like both of them were going to be seeing that medic. Lisa helped Trask up, watching his lips fumble over silent words as his legs trembled. There was something seriously wrong with the man. Simple brain damage wouldn’t lead to the variety of symptoms he was cycling through. Perhaps he’d had an encounter with one of the Sith Jedi-equivalents , or-  
Lisa had a sudden, dreadful thought. What if Trask had an implant as well? What if the wound on his skull had hit the implant and caused it to tarn him into this? Lisa paused at the intersection and traced her hand along the same arc that her mark took. And sure enough, there was the depression, scything through the deep gash still slowly weeping a pink mix us pus and blood.

Lisa had hardly any time to process these revelations when the sound of clashing lightsabers echoed through the hall as the blast door behind the two was flung from its place, crashing onto the opposite wall.


	7. In Which our Hero Forgets, and the Sidekick makes himself useful

A man in dark, gothic armor peeled himself out from the door that had been wrapped around him. Attention focused solely on the other side of the gaping wound in the wall, the man (almost a boy, looking at the attempted goatee and kolto-slavered spots) did not seem to see Lisa pressed against the ground. She held Trask down where she had thrown him, one hand on his chest and the other over his mouth. The aura of menace was palpable. An oily feeling crept its way up the back of her neck, and the taste of copper tainted the air.

Fear paralyzed Lisa as her eyes latched upon the object the man had just stooped to pick up.

A Lightsaber.

Red light spilled across the floor.

Lights around him flickered and failed.

Impossible winds danced, throwing his cape dramatically.

A lance of scorn echoed through the fear-blanked halls of Lisa’s brain. It was a cocky being who put appearance above practicality in a fight.

A scrape from behind caused both fugitives heads to whip back to the ragged edges behind. A woman in plain wrapped robes stepped daintily over the wreckage, mouth pulled down in disgust at the sloppy excrement left by one of the dead men.

Power emanated from her slight frame. A lightsaber hilt swung at her hip, unarmored yet unmarked by the wear and tear of battle.

Lisa was drowning. Dueling waves of malice and excitement crashed over her, choking her, breaking her.

Rumbling of engines under her fingers.

Electric crashes and humming.

Screaming.

Unfocused light darting around.

There was so much that Lisa could feel. She was face down (I have to stay still or they’ll kill me) in a pool of cooling blood- dragging a convulsing comrade through rumbling corridors with pain lancing through her temples (not now, not now, I can’t leave her to die)- clutching her shoddy gun fearfully, searching for lost (why won’t you answer, I will not lose you) and likely dead friends- fleeing from traitors (your fault, your fault they killed them all) and enemy weapons, taking occasional potshots as she ran- clutching a gut wound as her brother desperately tried to keep her conscious (tell Mum and Ell I love them, and eat all your rations little bro) - peering round the door to the escape pods, but there was something very wrong (who’s listening in?).

Straightening up, she turned to her reflection in the dark window and spoke.

“You should not be doing this’, the concerned frown hiding a growing panic.

“Do you ever know what you’re doing?’. At some unseen signal, the frown melted into a look of pity, and a sigh broke from her lips.

“No matter the circumstances, this cannot be allowed.” A hand drifted across the glass and her voice hardened.

“Forget this, and do not question the memory loss.”

Resolving to consult the council once this whole fiasco was over, Bastila Shan clambered into the cramped pod and tapped the launch button.

Nothing happened.

Another tap, and then a frustrated slam with the palm of her hand.

Still nothing.

The next hit, force-augmented, would have broken a Wookie’s jaw clean in two. A splinter snapped off the side of the cheap plastic and jammed itself into the meat of Bastila’s palm.

Air whistled through her gritted teeth in an echoing hiss. Hand clutched against her chest, Bastila poked her head out of the airlock, swinging from left to right. The coast was clear. The embarrassment Bastila felt sprinting to the control panel was only equal to the time she realized she was in the wrong class halfway through the lesson and had to dash loudly through the abandoned Dantooine courtyard to catch up with the field trip.

It only took a few seconds to release the docking clamps, but it felt much longer. Turning to go, Bastila’s belt caught on a jagged edge where the neighboring panel had been shot. The Jedi was tired of all these distractions, and her humiliation clouded her judgment.

A tug and slight ripping noise was all it took for her to step into the pod, hit the button, and groan in relief when the jets ignited. Bastila did not focus on the disengagement sequence, rather on burying that incident with in her mind.

At her waist, edges began to fray, and an oversized Lightsaber slipped ever so slightly from its clasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, I got to write. Short answer for not doing so before is a combination of real life and unlimited access to Skyrim.
> 
> Also, here is the explanation for Trask being nuts in lots of different ways.  
> He is/was a genius, working with much older men to intercept enemy communications and alter them mid-way through sending. To do this the needed brain implants to hook themselves into the spaceship’s sensors and equipment (faster and more intuitive).
> 
> Trask jailbroke his implant so he could play VR MMO’s with it while in and off duty. A side effect of this was the removal of most of the safeties. When the Sith attacked, they put a virus into the ships system that attacked everyone and everything linked to the ships intranet. Including the implanted people. The entire department turned into screaming berserkers. 
> 
> Thanks to Trasks reprogramming, he wasn’t completely controlled, but that last of safeties means that it’s randomly shocking various parts of his brain, resulting in the erratic behaviour.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how far I'll manage to get through the game, but hopefully this was funny.


End file.
